In the News

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Platinum Partner and Client Feedback Tool Premier Partner, is pleased to announce the addition of Ashely Jabalera to the consulting services team. Ashley has joined the firm as a Deltek Vision CRM consultant. In this position, she will work with clients to implement Deltek Vision’s CRM, Custom Proposal, and SF330 modules, as well as, the Client Feedback Tool and Blackbox Connector tools.

Ashley has over 17 years of experience in the A/E/C industry with an extensive background in business development and leadership within an extremely competitive and product based service environments. Her work history includes the procurement of projects ranging from $10 million to over $1 billion, with a focus on healthcare, commercial, retail, industrial, higher education, government and military clients.

"In the ever-changing world of technology choices – Full Sail Partners offers the stability of Deltek Vision, and a history of successful implementations that will allow you to spend your time and resources on what’s important to you – your clients," said Ashley.

The Full Sail Partners CRM consultant acts as a trusted advisor for all clients and their focus is to evaluate the client's existing software solution and develop a training strategy that is unique to each client experience. In this role, Ashley will leverage her knowledge to ensure our clients continue to be successful long into the future.  

“Our team will be strengthened by adding Ashley, and our clients will benefit from her strong marketing, business development and consulting experience,” stated Sarah Gonnella, VP of Marketing & Sales. “Her background combined with her keen ability to identify customer needs will provide highly responsive solutions for our clients. We are thrilled to have her join Full Sail Partners.”

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department. Interested in learning more about the Full Sail Partners' team? Check out our crew!  

It wasn’t long ago that firm management took a “need-to-know” approach with sharing project performance information with staff. Today, most firms have changed their attitude about access to project information. Firm managers want project managers to be engaged with the financial results of their projects and have taken great steps to train them to use the Deltek Vision reporting tools and dashboards. Still, project managers are intimidated and paralyzed by the information they receive.

So why are project managers not taking responsibility for their projects?

• Budgets are not easy to access or review against actual performance
• Reports are complex and rely heavily upon the accounting cycle that many project managers don’t understand
• Too much information in reports makes it difficult to focus on what is important
• Analyzing data requires pulling information into Excel for What-If scenarios
• Access to information “on-the-go” is not available 

How Can We Change This? 

Enter iAccess. The tool built for project managers to provide them the information they need at their fingertips to successfully manage projects. Even more, it’s ready to go right out of the box. Sure, that sounds too good to be true and one might wonder what you get with iAccess’ standard configuration. 

Here’s a high-level summary. An iAccess core feature that requires no configuration provides a simple project review tool that allows users to quickly review, analyze, and focus on projects needing attention. Any project accessed will appear with current contract, labor, and expense information in graphical and tabular formats at the project or lower levels. This removes the need of having complicated reports and performing What-If scenarios. 

Can iAccess Do More? 

iAccess, like Deltek Vision has the flexibility to meet the different and complex needs of each individual firm. From simple custom configuration of reports to in-depth configuration of projects, iAccess provides the same information that’s stored within Deltek Vision to project managers from anywhere they have an internet connection.   

With just some minimal configuration, project managers can use iAccess as a comprehensive project management tool from the beginning of the project through closeout by using the planning functionality. Starting with an original budget, project managers can interact with their projects as needed to review actual data and then provide estimates of additional effort required to complete the project. 

Stay Connected with iAccess 

The real-time connection to your Deltek Vision database and the mobile accessibility of the iAccess tool may be the missing link in motivating your project managers to take more control over their project financial management responsibilities. The use of iAccess allows them to absorb data in a friendly format while creating a platform for predictive information entry and sharing across the firm. Stop giving project managers an easy excuse for not taking responsibility.

 

Many professional services organizations are under the false impression that proposal automation is not worth the investment. While copying and pasting previous Request for Proposal (RFP) submissions may seem expedient, it is not really the case as firms must tailor them to the unique needs of each new proposal. Let’s review a few reasons why proposal automation will benefit your firm if it is incorporated into the bidding process.

Firms Shouldn’t Depend on Previous RFP Content

Relying on past proposals as your content library is a bad move. Far too often, though, professional services firms fall into the trap of utilizing past RFPs in this way. There are a litany of reasons to avoid copying and pasting past proposal content:

• A higher rate of human error
• Past content typically contains other companies branding and imagery
• A generic approach leads to a generic response
• Lack of focus on the needs of the individual client

Proposal automation will eliminate human error. It will also create a consistent proposal format that contains details suited for each individual client and ensures proper branding.

Accurate Technical and Background Answers Are Necessary

Proposal teams can expect a list of common questions during the RFP process. RFP questionnaires typically contain background questions (founding date, partnerships, administrative information) and technical questions (performance KPIs, background details, etc.) As a result, copying previous proposals can lead to submitting inaccurate information.

With proposal automation, your firm can make sure that these frequently used answers are accurately reflected and are available for quick reference in your proposal content library.

Review Your Content!

Content reviews are an essential element in differentiating winners from losers. Your firm’s content library needs to be continually refined. Each piece of content should be relevant and error free. Additionally, your proposal team must be notified of pertinent changes so outdated content doesn’t spread into future proposals.

Using proposal automation, common content can be managed in a central location. Whoever is managing the content can ensure that the proposal team has only the most up to date information.

It should be evident now why proposal automation is worth the investment. Check out how Deltek Vision firms are implementing proposal automation to win more projects! 

 

It is a mystery why we deal with time management so badly. This is our commodity which we sell to our clients. However, we treat it like a curse, as if it’s an evil process that accounting forces on us. It somehow escapes us that this is the lifeblood of our business, and without it, we are out of business. So why don’t we manage this better and how can we improve our firm’s practices? 

Well, to begin with, the timesheet function in Deltek Vision is incredibly easy to use. You just need to know what features to focus on. Let’s take a look at timesheets and what is offered in Deltek Vision regarding time management.

Timesheet Best Practices

Project management best practices always include sound timesheet management processes. First of all, timesheets should be entered daily and submitted timely. Secondly, project manager review is mandatory. Timesheets should be corrected before they are posted to our projects and the billing system in Deltek Vision.

Poor timesheet management inherently leads to inefficient processes later. Timesheet miscodes cause incorrect project reporting and erroneous invoices. Additionally, transferring time entries in the billing system is time consuming. This slows down billing, involves the project manager, employee and accounting. Worst of all, this directly affects cash flow because of the delay in processing client invoices.

Features of Timesheets in Deltek Vision

We need sound, efficient and thorough timesheet management policies and procedures. They need to be incorporated into our culture. Along with daily entry and strict deadlines for timesheet submission, Deltek Vision has a number of tools to assist project managers with this process:

Floor Check was introduced in Version 7.2 and is a powerful tool that lets timesheet administrators see if employees are doing their timesheets. It shows the employee’s expected hours and the actual hours entered. Additionally, floor check has email functionality, so you can email employees directly and tell them, “DO YOUR TIMESHEET,” or you can also create pre-defined messages.

Unposted Labor Report is a standard project report that only shows unposted time sheets. This is the ideal tool for project managers to use in order to see what has been charged to their projects before they are posted. This is the perfect opportunity to fix timesheets before they are charged to our projects.

Project Reports with Unposted Time reports can be included in project reports by using the unposted time option. As a result, project managers can see labor being charged to their projects during the timesheet period.

Line Item Approval allows project managers to use line item approvals to put their final approval on time charged to their projects once timesheets are submitted. Line item approvals link to project ownership, so project managers will only see their projects.

Timesheet Audit Trail tracks changes to timesheets after they have been saved or submitted. You can require the employee enter a comment, or just track changes without explanation. Audit trails can also track billing transfers. This is the “where did it go” and “where did it come from” report. A timesheet audit trail report is available in employee reporting.

Get Your Timesheets Done!

With all of these tools within Deltek Vision at your disposal, timesheet management is within your grasp. You can simply start with daily timesheet reminders. Eventually, you will develop a plan that makes timesheet management best practices part of your firm’s culture. 

 

Organizations with antiquated talent management philosophies will struggle to attract, nurture and retain top talent in 2017. Many HR teams make the common mistake of having decentralized or ineffective systems and processes. This infographic illustrates six key statistics that demonstrate why HR teams can no longer be reactionary and should evaluate their talent management processes and systems.

Learn More about the Challenges of Talent Management

Interested in learning more about how to overcome the increased competition for talent in 2017? Join our webinar where we will discuss how HR can overcome the top five challenges with talent acquisition.

Does your firm work internationally and deal with multiple currencies? Did you know there is a way to automate the tracking and conversion data? Within Deltek Vision is the Multicurrency function which holds the key to simplifying this process for your firm.

Vision Multicurrency allows you to:

• Manage multiple currencies for transactions, accounting and financial reporting
• Enter and manage exchange rates which can be done manually or can be automated to pull in exchange rates (XE.com has an auto feed subscription for this)
• Support daily and periodic exchange rate changes
• Revalue foreign currency accounts and automatically identify a gain or loss due to currency fluctuations

Considerations when Using Deltek Vision Multicurrency

With any changes to your standard accounting practices, there are always some items that need to be taken into consideration:

Revenue Considerations: Revenue generation will now use the billing currency fields in the project info center.

Project Considerations: Once you set a project to a currency and the project has data on it, the currency code cannot be changed on the project. It is very important to set the project to the correct currency upon initial setup. All lower levels of the work breakdown structure (WBS) must also be set to the same currency as the project. Optionally, a billing currency can be set differently than the project currency, but all lower levels will need to match.

General Ledger Account Considerations: In Vision Multicurrency accounts can be left without a specific currency or set to a single currency. In some situations, the company might set a bank account to a specific functional currency. For example, a bank account is set to USD for use by only the USD company. You might leave other accounts open to be used across companies with different currencies. Once an account is set to a currency that is different than the functional currency, it is then considered a foreign denominated account.

Unit Considerations: You must specify both a project and billing currency.

Vendor Considerations: Vendor records are stored in the functional currency of the active company. Additionally, there are several details to note for vendor records:

• Functional Currency – the home currency or the currency in which the company operates
• Transactional Currency – the currency in which a transaction is entered into Vision
• Presentation Currency - used in reporting to generate a report with all amounts expressed in a single currency
• Billing Currency - the currency used to generate invoices and billing reports for specific projects and their WBS
• Project Currency – the currency in which the project is managed which can be different than the functional currency when needed (this currency should be used for all project management purposes including reporting)
• Payment Currency – the currency in which the payments are made
• Consolidated Reporting Currency – only available in a Multicompany environment and is used to create consolidated financial statements for multiple companies that are using different functional currencies
• Account Currencies – each account setup for use as a bank account and mapped to a GL code can be set to a specific currency directly through the account setup of the GL (if you specify an account currency that is different from the company’s functional currency, the account is then considered a foreign-denominated account)
• Tax Currency – if tax auditing is enabled then a currency must be set for each tax code (this is generally the currency in which you report and pay the tax amounts to the proper tax authority)

Generally Accepted Accounting Practices in Deltek Vision Multicurrency

Deltek Vision Multicurrency is in accordance with the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) sections ASC-830-10-55-10 and 11. In section 55-10, the guideline states that it is acceptable to use averages or other methods of approximation. Accordingly, it is recommended to use a weighted average of the exchange rate for a period rather than applying actual day-to-day fluctuations.

Furthermore, section 55-11 states that average rates used shall be appropriately weighted by the volume of functional currency transactions occurring during an accounting period. In other words, to translate revenue and expense accounts for an annual period, individual revenue and expense accounts for each quarter or month may be translated at that quarter's or that month's average rate. The translated amounts for each quarter or month should then be combined for the annual totals.

Why Use Multicurrency in Deltek Vision?

Multicurrency can be used for tracking currency exchange gains and losses. Having foreign-denominated accounts creates the need to track gains and losses based on fluctuating exchange rates. For example, if a European company has a bank account denominated in United States dollars and the value of the euro rises against the United States dollar, the value in euros of that bank account balance drops. This results in an unrealized loss to the European company. Using Multicurrency allows you to use the Gains/Losses and Revaluations process in Vision to calculate and post these types of currency exchange gains and losses. As a result, they appear on your financial statements per the generally accepted accounting practices under which you operate.

 

In a previous blog, we reviewed multi-company functionality in Deltek Vision and learned how it serves as a tool for sharing and accounting for resources across the companies within an enterprise. Cross charge capabilities in Vision are based on similar theories as multi-company, but are focused on the interaction within a company and its organizational breakdown structure (OBS). Before we dive deeper, here are some links to blogs about multi-company functionality and OBS in case you are unfamiliar with these topics.

High Level Insight into Cross Charge in Deltek Vision 

It is important to understand that cross charging is a financial tool and is based on the general ledger. It is not an attribute of project reporting since time charged to a project remains on the project for billing and reporting purposes. Cross charge is labor focused and occurs after the timesheet is posted. 

By default, Vision is built to be project centric, which simply means that the process of entering and posting timesheets determines where the labor charges are assigned. If the cross charge process is not configured or run, the cost will remain on the “books” of the organization where the project is assigned. 

Why Use Cross Charge? 

As financial and operational managers, we must always remember that revenue can only be earned once and a cost incurred once. For this reason, cross charge allows businesses to move these elements in and out of various “buckets” within their organization. When a combined income statement is run, all cross charge entries will zero out and the original revenue and cost will remain. 

The cross charge process is used when firms loan and borrow labor at the lowest OBS level, which could be: 

• Office
• Department
• Discipline
• Market Sector 

A good example is a civil engineer where projects live in the various disciplines. The survey department would loan their staff to the engineering projects and cross charge would be the financial component to drive and manage the accounting for the labor. 

There are two internal pricing options to choose from when configuring cross charge: 

1. Project Centric – This is when labor remains on the books of the organization where the project resides. A multiplier is then used to account for some portion of operational/overhead (OH) costs. This factor could be limited to a fringe benefit rate, could represent a breakeven OH rate or even include some profit. The purpose is to ensure that the loaning organization has an incentive to keep their staff busy, but they also need to be careful as to not over extend their resources. 

2. Employee Centric – This works by adjusting labor back to the employee’s organization. Using typical billing rates, although a multiplier can be used, the revenue is moved from the projects to the employee’s organization. The purpose again is to ensure the loaning organization doesn’t lose the ability to show a profit by sharing their staff. 

Real-life Application of Cross Charge in Deltek Vision 

Here is a success story where the operational process and projects are built on the premise that fee and scope drives work breakdown structure (WBS) in a clients’ Deltek Vision database. Under this model, high accountability becomes the first option where phases and tasks within a project are assigned to different organizations based on the portion of the work. Employees then charge the phase/task that is assigned to the organization they “live” in. This results in more closely managed projects because the profit accountability is shifted back to the organization supplying the labor. This process eliminates the need for cross charge. 

But wait…realizing that in order to run successful projects, there is a necessity to anticipate unplanned needs. This means that the firm must have the ability to borrow an employee from another department for a short-term assignment or a last minute need. For example, the base building studio decides it needs input from the interiors studio. In this scenario, the client falls back on the project centric method noted above as a mechanism to facilitate resource sharing and not impede project progress. Furthermore, this is a prime example of a need for cross charge. 

Gain Control of Resources with Cross Charge 

Whether your current OBS is solid or you are considering a change, cross charge can provide the functionality required to ensure an open and smooth process of resource sharing. With a thorough understanding and effective implementation, cross charge can provide another dimension in managing your business.

 

 

As Deltek Vision systems are implemented and processes are written, the common denominator is most often the connection between the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) and the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Whether it be the uniqueness of each or the relationship between the two, the attention paid to these early stages of development is instrumental in the flow and reporting of information in your Vision database. In the following, we’ll explore some areas to consider when designing the structure of your database.

Company Structure and the Organizational Breakdown Structure in Deltek Vision 

The OBS can take on many different builds from the very simple to extremely detailed. Various example options include: 

• Location approach
• Discipline/department approach
• Market sector BD driven 

When designing the OBS in Deltek Vision, the system allows for up to five hierarchical levels and allocation of overhead requirements to be incorporated into the structure of the database. If you are using a multi-company database, then level one needs to be reserved for the different companies in your enterprise. Learn more about Vision Multi-Company in this article. 

Additionally, when building the OBS it is most important to be aware of financial accountability in your organization. For example, if you are using two levels, such as office and department, each combination will produce an income statement. As a result, someone within the organization is responsible for these statements. 

Furthermore, various cross sections can be extracted for combined financial reporting. For instance, if you have mechanical department in three offices, firms can create a mechanical income statement. A structure such as this allows for: 

• Office accountability
• Office/Department accountability
• Overall Department accountability 

Projects and the Work Breakdown Structure in Deltek Vision 

The WBS specifically relates to how a project will be organized and the firm’s preference for the flow of revenue and costs. The majority of firms find it to be most effective if they build their WBS based on project budgets. Generally, this should be driven by the fee and scope using a bottom up approach. 

Deltek Vision allows for three levels in the WBS, which are commonly labeled, Project, Phase and Task. However, this can be tailored to your firm’s preference. Even more, accountability within a project can be assigned through the WBS. As a result, the entire project can have a manager and/or phase and task managers, which can be assigned based on the scope and budget responsibility. 

It is important to note that project builds and WBS don’t have to be the same across all projects. While not all firms are the same, it is highly recommended for most firms to let every project have at least one WBS 2. In other words, another WBS variation. Additionally, projects can be built with no WBS 3 or only some parts of the WBS 2 extending into the WBS 3. 

Team Work Makes the Dream Work 

Like the players on any type of team, the OBS and WBS need to play their roles both individually and in tandem to support the greater good of the team. The WBS at its lowest level drives how revenue and cost post to the lowest level of the OBS. Here are additional items to consider: 

• “Mirroring” the OBS in WBS for overhead projects
• The combinations of cross charge, intercompany billing and high accountability you plan to build into WBS
• The division of financial and operational accountability

Final Thoughts 

In today’s robust business environment, many firms are evaluating and updating both their OBS and WBS in Deltek Vision. A popular build methodology is using both geography and market sectors to build and operate under a 3D matrix solution. When considering changes to your current structures, the help of both functional and data consultants can result in a new and more productive Vision system. Timing and cutover planning is essential to success. Now is the time to get creative and strive to get the most out of your operations.